May 2014

Long used to opposing candidates bitterly facing off in elections, US voters are being offered a different choice for this year’s congressional polls -- the spectacle of billionaires battling each other head on. On top of the formal campaigns, spending by so-called super political action committees -- bodies that face no restrictions on donations but cannot co-ordinate with candidates -- has exploded in recent years. But the greatest spurt of growth in the run-up to the 2014 congressional elections is through “dark money” channels, funds that are donated to non-profit advocacy groups and trade and business associations.

Unlike campaigns and super PACs, donations to non-profits and trade associations do not have to be declared and their spending can only be tracked by examining their purchases of advertising and tax returns. Ahead of the November polls, the outlays of such bodies is running at three times the rate of the 2012 presidential campaign, and at 17 times that of the 2010 midterms elections for the House and the Senate. At the current rate, these groups might spend upwards of $1 billion on the 2014 elections, according to a report by Robert Maguire, of the Center for Responsive Politics, in Washington.

Google has bought Divide, a New York-based start-up that lets users securely separate their work and personal data on smartphones and tablets, effectively turning one device into two.

The idea is to help Google attract business customers dealing with a generation of “bring your own device” workers – people who reject the clunky hardware favored by many big companies, and instead use their own smartphones for work documents and e-mails. This self-service approach poses a problem for companies which cannot control security on those devices, and which risk losing their sensitive data and intellectual property if an employee misplaces their personal phone in the back of a taxi.

[Commentary] In the coming months, federal regulators need to decide on two big mergers: Comcast's proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable and AT&T's proposed purchase of DirecTV. The deals are similar in size and both involve big pay-television companies getting even bigger. But the deals have produced strikingly different reactions.

The Comcast deal attracted immediate condemnation from a broad range of left-leaning groups such as Public Knowledge, which quickly condemned the merger and called on regulators to stop it. Public Knowledge's reaction to AT&T's proposed purchase of DirecTV also sounded a skeptical note, but it was much more muted.

What explains the difference? A big factor is the different ways the two deals would reshape the Internet. Comcast and Time Warner Cable are two of the nation's largest broadband providers, and the combined company would control a third of all home broadband subscriptions.

Given the way Comcast has been throwing its weight around in recent interconnection disputes, there's reason to worry about the nation's biggest broadband provider getting even bigger. AT&T is also a fairly big broadband provider -- it has 16 million subscribers compared with Comcast's 20 million.

But DirecTV has is not a significant broadband provider, so combining the two firms won't increase AT&T's leverage in negotiations with the rest of the Internet. And 5 million of AT&T's subscribers are on low-speed DSL connections, not the kind of connection consumers are likely to use for video streaming.

In response to the proposed merger of AT&T and DirecTV, the following statement can be attributed to NAB Executive Vice President of Communications Dennis Wharton:

"AT&T's proposed merger with DirecTV demands a hard look in an increasingly consolidated broadband and pay television marketplace. It is hard to see how decreasing competitors in the pay TV marketplace -- while increasing regulatory restraints on local TV stations -- truly benefits consumers."